Fatherland : Alternate History with a Point

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  • Опубліковано 21 лис 2024

КОМЕНТАРІ • 727

  • @feralhistorian
    @feralhistorian  Місяць тому +210

    CORRECTION: Somehow I put up a picture of Bormann when I was talking about Buhler. The error is entirely mine.

    • @John.McMillan
      @John.McMillan Місяць тому +3

      Thank you for addressing this.
      An honest mistake.

    • @timp3931
      @timp3931 Місяць тому +6

      Do I get Brownie points for spotting it? Once I was accused of watching too much "secret lives of Nazis" on TV.

    • @flashgordon6670
      @flashgordon6670 Місяць тому +1

      Hitler and Eva Braun escaped to Argentina. You can watch the docudrama film Greywolf and Mark Felton videos; Find the Fuhrer, if you don’t believe me.
      And Operation Market Garden was all a gigantic feint. To keep the German panzers locked into the Netherlands and stop them reinforcing the Siegfried line.
      If Market Garden was a success, the entire British army would’ve been destroyed, on the North German plain.
      Watch the video; History undone: If Market Garden succeeds the Germans win the battle of the Bulge. On the Times Radio History channel, if you don’t believe me.

    • @flashgordon6670
      @flashgordon6670 Місяць тому +1

      See Tino Struckman Last Nazi Secrets Nuclear weapons.

    • @brucedamato2373
      @brucedamato2373 Місяць тому

      Wow, I thought that was a picture of the wealthy industrialist from South America who found the last golden Wonka ticket before it was found out that he made a counterfeit ticket. Then Charlie bucket got the real last 5th golden ticket.

  • @walnzell9328
    @walnzell9328 Місяць тому +166

    Robert Harris was absolutely right. No one would've cared. Even ongoing genocides do not persuade nations to cease trade and cooperation. The machine keeps moving.

    • @scottyp1303
      @scottyp1303 28 днів тому +11

      What are the differences between Warsaw 1943 and present day Gaza?

    • @walnzell9328
      @walnzell9328 28 днів тому +22

      Just to be clear, I was not pointing out one particular genocide. I was referring to all ongoing genocides. Such as in:
      Sudan
      Myanmar
      Afghanistan
      Ukraine
      Pakistan
      China
      and many more.
      Not all of them are being performed in the exact same way. Some could be considered cultural genocide, as in not slaughtering an entire population, rather trying to destroy a culture to convert the populace to an occupiers culture.
      But others are in fact total annihilation.

    • @RedStarRogue
      @RedStarRogue 25 днів тому

      That's true, but the US hasn't always been guilty of inaction. They exported alot of raw materials to Imperial Japan before completely cutting it off in response to Japan's atrocities in China, thus severely weakening Japans economy. They even demanded Japan get their troops out of China in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor.
      From the Cold War era to today though, yeah they don't care anymore.

    • @avvc21
      @avvc21 11 днів тому +1

      ​@scottyp1303 they're identical. Neither have a genocide

    • @walnzell9328
      @walnzell9328 11 днів тому

      @@avvc21 The Holocaust was in full swing in 1943. Just because the Warsaw Uprising hadn't happened yet doesn't mean Jews and Poles weren't being sent to camps.
      Unless you're arguing the Nazis did nothing wrong, in which case that's a whole other problem. Why would you even be here if that's the case? Just to say how much of an insufferable jerk you are?

  • @historynerd2677
    @historynerd2677 Місяць тому +475

    US v nazi Cold War scenario is always so much more interesting then the man in the high castle scenario .
    TNO is my favorite version of this kind of world with its three way Cold War and warlord Russia

    • @victorkreig6089
      @victorkreig6089 Місяць тому +1

      Man in the high castle was written by a man raised on propaganda and lies about what happened during the war and who was doing what
      Therefore the Saturday morning villian levels it gets to is going to be silly no matter how many liberties you take with it

    • @spartanalex9006
      @spartanalex9006 Місяць тому +76

      Personally, I like TNO more as a silly version of such a timeline with a preference to Old TNO. I personally think that TWR did the concept better seriously and am currently taking my own stab at it in as a very early timeline and draft.

    • @maxwellgarner3445
      @maxwellgarner3445 Місяць тому +1

      ​@spartanalex9006 i always thought that TNO was probably too drastically pessimistic, or at least riding full soviet propaganda about the regime, not that I think moderates would really survive in a fascist state, but there's not really a liberal faction, it's always "what can we do to be as consciously evil as possible instead of semi benign"
      Burgundy is a national death cult at least but there isn't, essentially, the reichs post office life experience

    • @ConsueloWubba
      @ConsueloWubba Місяць тому +39

      The man in high castle stuff is just fluff. Borderline propaganda and lame. I agree, your scenario is much more intriguing.

    • @DAGDRUM53
      @DAGDRUM53 Місяць тому +3

      @@ConsueloWubba Couldn't agree more, High Castle is PKD at his worst.

  • @doublep1980
    @doublep1980 Місяць тому +566

    The japanese manga/ anime Jin-Roh would be another interesting ''alternate history'' story, that features different security/police forces who are antagonizing each other. It's also set in the 1960's in a Japan that was taken over by their Nazi allies.

    • @ekurisona663
      @ekurisona663 Місяць тому +40

      you're the only other person I've ever heard mention jin-roh...🐺

    • @BrendanSchmelter
      @BrendanSchmelter Місяць тому +27

      I hardily 2nd this!!! The entire Kerberos Saga is fascinating.

    • @GrimFaceHunter
      @GrimFaceHunter Місяць тому +25

      ​@@ekurisona663 I wouldn't even know about Jin-Roh if there wasn't an amv with And one- panzermensch.

    • @victorkreig6089
      @victorkreig6089 Місяць тому

      *NSDAP
      Nazi is an invented propaganda name not a name they gave themselves

    • @ognoders
      @ognoders Місяць тому +22

      Japan was part of the allies in Jin-Roh

  • @QuizmasterLaw
    @QuizmasterLaw Місяць тому +248

    I only saw the film.
    "little bastard called the gestapo"'
    Glad to see the book had some historic accuracy!

    • @tomconneely1361
      @tomconneely1361 Місяць тому +14

      The book's portrayal of the son is so different to the movie. In both cases, the child is a victim of the system, but the book gives him no redemption of regret, but the satisfaction of his duty done and done well.

    • @johnclose2925
      @johnclose2925 Місяць тому

      Unfortunately children of socialist regimes are brainwashed at an early stage using the educational system to inform on their parents. If you watch the film "The death of Stalin" you see an example of it, followed by the father returning home after his release and the son looking ashamed for what he did. Many Hitler Youth were responsible for their parents death.

  • @adamlove3295
    @adamlove3295 Місяць тому +172

    This was the first Alternate History novel I ever read not written by an author named Turtledove or Forstchen. I was just entering my 20s at the time, and it was my introduction to a more realistic portrayal of amoral bureaucracies and the self-interest of populations. At the time, the open-ended nature of the ending left me a bit confused and deflated, but of course I now understand how much more realistic and sophisticated it was than the work of the other authors I'd enjoyed in my teens.
    As you say, HBO's adaptation was fine for what it was, a less sophisticated but still engaging story. To this day, though, I have to laugh at the fact that the screenwriters decided we needed to see Rutger Haur die in the rain.
    Again.

    • @hanng1242
      @hanng1242 Місяць тому

      It was to hide his tears so as to symbolize the loss of the moments. Or something.
      The big problem with alt history fiction is that it tends to get worse the farther the timeline moves away from the history-altering event because the authors cannot help but assume that real history would reassert itself in a slightly different context. I think a good example of this is in Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Years of Rice and Salt." In his novel, Robinson has the Scientific Revolution start in Samarkand sometime in what would have been the 17th Century. However, Robinson never addresses the deliberate rejection of science by the Islamic world back around the 9th Century. I refer, of course, to the triumph of the Ash'arites over the Mu'tazilites and the persecution of the latter under the Abbasids - a rather conclusive epistemological closure, as real history demonstrates. In the West, the idea that natural physical laws exist because God is rational and so we can know God through His works, something that both the medieval Scholastics in the Latin West as well as their theological opponents in the Greek East nevertheless agreed upon, laid the philosophical foundation for science as theoretical discipline (as opposed to the preservation of knowledge acquired through trial-and-error for utilitarian reasons). A similar philosophical line of thought had arisen during the time of the Umayyads, but it was ultimately rejected as contrary to the idea of Allah's absolute sovereignty. The result was that Christendom could take the works of the Classical world and expand and build on such knowledge whereas the Umma, which has a head start on holding such works thanks to their conquests of the Hellenistic world, stagnated. Robinson only addresses this is a cursory way in a short chapter about some madrassas considering the scientific findings, with the assumption that the pro-science side won out, but Robinson does not even mention that such a debate had happened before nor acknowledge that his plot point would be a radical overturning of long-settled Islamic theology. The problem is not positing that such a reversal could happen in the Islamic world, but rather the failure to acknowledge that Islamic modes of thought were so different from our own during the relevant time that such a radical departure should require explanation (especially since in Robinson's novel Christendom is simply non-existent due to the Black Death, an empty Europe was colonized by Muslim settlers, and so there are no powerful European states with a technological advantage out there that might induce a civilization to rethink old assumptions). Turtledove falls into a similar trap as his post War Between the States world seems to develop along the same lines as the real world did even though the European powers watched our Civil War carefully and took lessons from it in developing their own military doctrines - lessons that that might have been quite different if the war had been won by the Confederacy through inspired generalship a year before the logistical and industrial advantages of the Union that actually won the war became apparent in the Western theatre, and which could very well have altered the way everything from the Franco-Prussian war to WWI would have been fought.

    • @williestyle35
      @williestyle35 Місяць тому +8

      For me it was the opposite journey : _Fatherland_ was nearly the first serious "alternative history" I read as a young teenager. After a couple of real WWII history books from a "book of the month club" I found a specialty military history book club and got a couple of their selections of "alternative history", was not overly impressed. Then _Fatherland_ came along and was a little gateway to authors like Turtledove, who I did not fully appreciate until his "WorldWar" series. Now I just read the actual history and try to understand how something as "amoral" as Nazism could become appealing to a nation of people.
      Good point about the HBO series having Rutger Hauer* die in the rain, again.

    • @williestyle35
      @williestyle35 Місяць тому

      For me it was the opposite journey : _Fatherland_ was nearly the first serious "alternative history" I read as a young teenager. After a couple of real WWII history books from a "book of the month club" I found a specialty military history book club and got a couple of their selections of "alternative history", was not overly impressed. Then _Fatherland_ came along and was a little gateway to authors like Turtledove, who I did not fully appreciate until his "WorldWar" series. Now I just read the actual history and try to understand how something as "amoral" as Nazism could become appealing to a nation of people.
      Good point about the HBO series having Rutger Hauer* die in the rain, again.

    • @EdDantes-v8c
      @EdDantes-v8c Місяць тому

      Like the Turtledove books!

    • @understatedwalrus
      @understatedwalrus Місяць тому +3

      I couldn't help but snort at that death scene. It had to be on purpose.

  • @SpaceMonkey23101
    @SpaceMonkey23101 Місяць тому +356

    Your opening analysis on the place of WW2 in the creation of the modern world and the myth of Nazism as a 'singular evil' is spot on. I expect you will attract a lot of criticism over that, but well done for saying what many of us have been thinking for years.

    • @igorslocks
      @igorslocks Місяць тому +67

      What's as scary or even scarier is you can't discuss the possibility or you may face the possibility of jail in certain nations.
      That's more telling than any story does.
      Wise up people.

    • @TK421-53
      @TK421-53 Місяць тому

      It is not a singular evil, look at Zionism, which is broadly accepted by the mainstream yet would not pass critical and objective scrutiny - yet here we are witnessing (and supporting) a modern banality of evil.

    • @johnwolf2829
      @johnwolf2829 Місяць тому +13

      I would have prefered a Cold War with the nazis; just as this book shows the 3rd reich was too feeble a system to withstand the demands of peace-time.
      The 1960s was as far as they would have gone.

    • @cass7448
      @cass7448 Місяць тому +2

      @@igorslocks What do you mean?

    • @igorslocks
      @igorslocks Місяць тому +29

      @@cass7448 what I mean is that no matter how terrible the subject matter may be, banning legit discussion of it especially in nuance is a problem. As they say let the facts speak for themselves.

  • @darktower0603
    @darktower0603 Місяць тому +100

    You're one of my newest favorite channels. I've been going through your library over the last few weeks. I love your breakdowns, analysis and historical lessons. I really appreciate the work you do. Thanks!

    • @ManDuderGuy
      @ManDuderGuy Місяць тому +1

      Bigtime.

    • @flashgordon6670
      @flashgordon6670 Місяць тому +1

      Hitler and Eva Braun escaped to Argentina. You can watch the docudrama film Greywolf and Mark Felton videos; Find the Fuhrer, if you don’t believe me.
      And Operation Market Garden was all a gigantic feint. To keep the German panzers locked into the Netherlands and stop them reinforcing the Siegfried line.
      If Market Garden was a success, the entire British army would’ve been destroyed, on the North German plain.
      Watch the video; History undone: If Market Garden succeeds the Germans win the battle of the Bulge. On the Times Radio History channel, if you don’t believe me.

  • @jameskalevra1387
    @jameskalevra1387 Місяць тому +62

    Really appreciate you including the bit about ww2 being the foundational myth of the modern era. A book "return of the strong gods" goes into this quite well, but definitely isnt althist.

  • @drsuchomimus
    @drsuchomimus Місяць тому +275

    This isn’t too different from how the United States, UK and France rehabilitated Turkey in the wake of WWI. Once the Kemalist govement came to power and both sides came to a political agreement, any mention of the genocide of Ottoman Turkish minorities was basically gone until revived in the 1960’s.

    • @igorslocks
      @igorslocks Місяць тому +53

      Even now few are aware of the Armenian genocide. By this I mean they know, they've heard. But not 'aware'

    • @gumdeo
      @gumdeo Місяць тому +30

      @@igorslocks And even fewer are aware that a huge number of Greeks were also murdered...

    • @flashgordon6670
      @flashgordon6670 Місяць тому +1

      Hitler and Eva Braun escaped to Argentina. You can watch the docudrama film Greywolf and Mark Felton videos; Find the Fuhrer, if you don’t believe me.
      And Operation Market Garden was all a gigantic feint. To keep the German panzers locked into the Netherlands and stop them reinforcing the Siegfried line.
      If Market Garden was a success, the entire British army would’ve been destroyed, on the North German plain.
      Watch the video; History undone: If Market Garden succeeds the Germans win the battle of the Bulge. On the Times Radio History channel, if you don’t believe me.

    • @OscarDirlwood
      @OscarDirlwood Місяць тому +12

      And Assyrians ​@@gumdeo

    • @corne1ius
      @corne1ius Місяць тому

      ​@@igorslocksThere is no Armenian genocide in real history.
      You probably know no more than what your Jewish puppet governments say. And you probably haven't read a book or a "real" document about the Armenian genocide. There is no Armenian genocide, but there is a Turkish genocide between 1911-1918. We lost more than 1 million civilians. Most of them killed by Armenians(500k-600k). Others is killed after Balkan Wars and after Greek invade on Anatolia.

  • @toby4700
    @toby4700 Місяць тому +93

    When I read Fatherland as a teenager one scene that oddly stuck with me was when March and his son were on a guided tour of the Reich's ridiculously big buildings and war memorials. The narration mentioned that the tour guide had to come into work with a cold that day. It mentions how she was clearly struggling to get her lines out with the proper flair and she even wipes her snotty nose on the sleeve of her uniform when she thinks no one is looking. It was such a weirdly normal moment, with this woman who probably had a couple of kids and bills to pay having to come in sick to a boring, tedious job she hated...which was showing off the Nazis's self important monuments.

    • @Orxbane
      @Orxbane 12 днів тому

      Yes, the ideology that promoted health and family would force sick mothers to come into work. Brilliant takeaway and of course brilliant writing. I'm sure the ethnic German woman would be fearful of being sent to a camp because she needed to take a sick day. What utter hogwash. The whole narrative is so tiresome.

  • @modelermark172
    @modelermark172 Місяць тому +115

    I agree that the book was much better than the movie - mainly due to its "Hollywood Ending."
    One movie scene in particular was when Pili was looking at an American magazine (I think it was "Life" or "Look,") that his father had confiscated from Charlie McGuire, featuring an advertisement for the March of Dimes, and depicted a boy with crutches who had survived polio. Pili said he thought it was sad that the boy was in that condition, and asked in all innocence why the Americans simply didn't "put him to sleep" the way Germany would have done. Xavier March replies with a story about an angel that didn't really answer the question. In my opinion, this was a classic "missed opportunity" that the screenplay adaptation wasted.
    Thanks for your thoughtful analysis!
    No pressure, but I'm looking forward to your take on S. M. Stirling's "Peshawar Lancers" in the hopefully near future . . . .
    196th Like.

    • @feralhistorian
      @feralhistorian  Місяць тому +31

      Peshawar Lancers is next up on my list of "things I've been meaning to read for 20+ years"

    • @zedfan4598
      @zedfan4598 Місяць тому +4

      @@feralhistorian Stirling again? How about all the Stirling books and series?

    • @williestyle35
      @williestyle35 Місяць тому +7

      That scene in the book with Pili was so... well written and thought out. Aktion T4 (the "euthanasia" of mentally infirm and physically disabled persons in Nazi Germany) was one of the few "atrocities" to become "known" to the German public during its operation. That particular "murder program" was even "successfully" protested by church groups in public. Aktion T4 was shut down for a time due to that public pressure, before the Nazis hid it away and started again. Makes the scene in the _Fatherland_ all the more chillingly understandable, from a certain point of view.
      (Aktion T4 being "known" in quotation marks, because the concentration camps were known or knowable - there were literally dozens of camps, and dozens upon dozens of sub-camps, and "work projects", around many of Germany's main cities and industrial areas - even tho the main "killing centers" [vernichtungslager, in German] were almost exclusively in Poland and the East).

    • @user-nm9qd6bo6h
      @user-nm9qd6bo6h Місяць тому

      @@williestyle35 Internment camps aren't automatically death camps, so it isn't surprising that they didn't protest over that. Proof being American internment camps for Japanese and Germans, Canadian internment camps of the same demographics. Did the population assume they were extermination facilities? No.

  • @gregmita
    @gregmita Місяць тому +129

    I always thought the movie was far too optimistic in its ending. In the real world, Western journalists actively helped cover up the Holodomor and keep it out of the public consciousness. George Orwell himself thought that truth about the Ukrainian famine was a lost cause. A world more friendly to the Nazis would have done something similar.

    • @jorenvanderark3567
      @jorenvanderark3567 Місяць тому +14

      Behind the bastards has two great podcast episodes on it. It's quite depressing but very interesting.

    • @flashgordon6670
      @flashgordon6670 Місяць тому +1

      Hitler and Eva Braun escaped to Argentina. You can watch the docudrama film Greywolf and Mark Felton videos; Find the Fuhrer, if you don’t believe me.
      And Operation Market Garden was all a gigantic feint. To keep the German panzers locked into the Netherlands and stop them reinforcing the Siegfried line.
      If Market Garden was a success, the entire British army would’ve been destroyed, on the North German plain.
      Watch the video; History undone: If Market Garden succeeds the Germans win the battle of the Bulge. On the Times Radio History channel, if you don’t believe me.

    • @MattS-j1g
      @MattS-j1g Місяць тому +1

      Wonder why ((western journalists)) would actively try to keep this truth from the public eye??

    • @BlueTyphoon2017
      @BlueTyphoon2017 Місяць тому

      ⁠@@jorenvanderark3567do you know the names of the podcast episodes?

    • @RebeccaTurner-ny1xx
      @RebeccaTurner-ny1xx Місяць тому

      That period has been effectively falsified in the public consciousness by so-called historians such as Robert Conquest or in Timothy Snyder's 'Bloodlands'. I recommend 'The Years of Hunger' (2004) by Wheatcroft & Davies: "We do not absolve Stalin from responsibility for the famine. His policies towards the peasants were ruthless and brutal. But the story which has emerged in this book is of a Soviet leadership which was struggling with a famine crisis which had been caused partly by their wrongheaded policies, but was unexpected and undesirable. The background to the famine is not simply that Soviet agricultural policies were derived from Bolshevik ideology, though ideology played its part. They were also shaped by the Russian pre-revolutionary past, the experiences of the civil war, the international situation, the intransigent circumstances of geography and the weather, and the modus operandi of the Soviet system as it was established under Stalin. They were formulated by men with little formal education and limited knowledge of agriculture. Above all, they were a consequence of the decision to industrialise the peasant country at breakneck speed."

  • @andreasl_fr2666
    @andreasl_fr2666 Місяць тому +45

    I think people tend to forget tha NS Germany (and this goes for any society , past or present , that plays the role of ultimate villian in your society´s grand narrative) was a real place inhabited by real people , and the average person was more or less the same as you are.

    • @TotalFreedomTTT-pk9st
      @TotalFreedomTTT-pk9st Місяць тому

      Until the War - it was clean and proper - not especially censorious - Wars produce self fulfilling prophesy's of terrorism's and crimes and censorship - just as true in Britain and the United States - it was an unnecessary war

    • @Groffili
      @Groffili Місяць тому +9

      The chilling thought about that is that most of the people who come to this conclusion stop at the "the average person was more or less the same as me"... and not realize "that means I'm just as bad as the average Nazi".

    • @Galvatronover
      @Galvatronover 27 днів тому

      @@Groffilimore like you could be just as bad as the average nazi given the right circumstance

    • @Orxbane
      @Orxbane 12 днів тому +2

      They just led better lives before 1940, then we do now in our Weimar 2.0 dystopia.

    • @uncreativename9936
      @uncreativename9936 День тому

      @@Groffili You're missing the point, you wouldn't say that about the average person in Stalin's Russia. I think another aspect people don't want to accept is that they're ultimately powerless in the direction of their country. They want to feel like they have some power therefore some responsibility, when in reality you're just along for the ride and didn't even get to chose the ride.

  • @ianeichenlaub5084
    @ianeichenlaub5084 Місяць тому +34

    Yup. My thoughts exactly when i read it in the early 00s. I was studying German in college, had worked in the library, and the library had a lot of books written in nazi Germany, enough to freak out the Germans on campus. And all the journals, physically. An early edition of many dark books were just dusty things on a shelf. Freedom is nice

    • @jytte-hilden
      @jytte-hilden Місяць тому +7

      Enjoy it wihle it lasts ;)

    • @MatthewSereysothea-hf1js
      @MatthewSereysothea-hf1js Місяць тому

      "Freedom is Nice" Yes it is, isn't it? Unless the orange
      Bloviator is Soundly and quite
      Overwhelmingly Thrashed in the election, these are, quite
      ironically, Our last days of the Freedom Our Ancestors fought and Died For...
      Please vote for the Lady and Her Friend, Please!

    • @stepchicken3238
      @stepchicken3238 Місяць тому

      I was in Berlin in 1987 - the Wall was still up. I went to a 'flea market' held in an area with lots of old railway carriages used as market stalls. In amongst the old magazines was a nazi school book. I was interested in looking at it to see how one aspect of the system had worked, but the stall holder wouldn't sell it to me. "Then, who is it on sale for?" I asked. My German wasn't good enough to argue with his garbled excuses.

    • @behemothfan1990
      @behemothfan1990 28 днів тому

      @@MatthewSereysothea-hf1js The Dems are creating a far more nightmarish reality currently. I cannot see it any other way, not a single person voted for Kamala during the primaries. She was the border tsar and it got far worse. The economy is much worse, and while the world shifts into an unstable, multipolar phase they fill the military and government departments with people whose only conviction is the new Marxism derived woke mind virus. Do not vote for the dems, please. You might not like Trump, indeed I disagree with some of his policies and rhetoric but he has surrounded himself with people of merit. Tulsi Gabbard, Vivek Ramaswami, RFK Jnr, Elon Musk to name just a couple. Who have the Dems got? Dick Cheney? Give me a fucking break.
      I'm not even American but even I can see what's happening.

  • @_Dovar_
    @_Dovar_ 2 дні тому +1

    You can rarely find a video that's clearly a 10/10.
    That you can and want to watch fully, without fast-forwarding.
    A single piece of "content" good enough to warrant a subscription.

  • @DAGDRUM53
    @DAGDRUM53 Місяць тому +24

    I love the Fatherland novel. Identical in plot to Len Deighton's SS-GB published 14 years earlier the two books couldn't be farther apart. In both an English detective admired for his investigative prowess by the occupying Germans is asked to look into a crime but when it's discovered a Nazi committed the act the detective is told to back off. Neither one does.

    • @stepchicken3238
      @stepchicken3238 Місяць тому +1

      A recurring theme. How far would you stick your neck out? Also appears in a sci-fi film, "Soylent Green:" Where, a Detective won't let go from finding out the story behind an industrialist's death.

  • @Supertroy1974
    @Supertroy1974 Місяць тому +81

    Most folks are completely ok living in Omelas.
    So nothing happened.
    World War II being the creation myth of the modern world is interesting because it is both a literal Combat Myth, and a version of the Classic Combat myth where an old god is threatened by chaos monster, and a young upstart god goes to bat, kills the chaos monster and then builds the world out of the guts of the slain monster.

    • @Hugebull
      @Hugebull Місяць тому +27

      It changed the world in every way. As an example, because conflict what transformed from two opposing sides to good versus evil, partisanship and terrorism became an accepted form of fighting. While just generations before, during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, such actions were despised by both sides and would immediately lead to summary execution no matter who caught you.
      Fun fact: Winston Churchill admits to being a war criminal with his actions in the Second Boer War. He was there as a war correspondent. But when his train was derailed and attacked, he took charge of the situation as he had been a Cavalry Officer in both India and Sudan. So, as a civilian and without a uniform, he took charge of the situation. He was captured, and while walking he subtly got rid of his pistol bullets to not be caught with a weapon.
      It was fully within the rights of the Boers to have him executed for this. But, considering the fact that he was the son of a well-respected Parliamentarian. And, the fact that he was a descendant of John Churchill, the First Duke of Marlborough, they let him live and placed him in a POW camp. From which, he was able to escape by train. Hid in a mine owned by an Englishman. And then got on another train and escaped to Portuguese Mozambique. Returning home as a national idol, and catapulted his political career.
      But with the Second World War, we started seeing the crimes of old become an accepted form of fighting. And we now see it as a crime that the Germans arrested and punished people who would have been seen as criminals just years prior.
      This has left us in a dark pickle. As we allowed, legitimized, and even hail terrorist activity. We saw a rise in just those activities.
      It is also problematic, because when you moralize your own position and your own actions. When you merge your views with virtue itself. True horrors emerge. You can now do anything against anyone because you are in the right, and they are in the wrong.
      When you make your enemy to be nothing but Orcs of Mordor, you can do anything you want against them.
      Because having the ability to justify any action, every action will be justified. And anyone who dares to voice their disapproval, is automatically seen as an Orc sympathizer.

    • @geraldfreibrun3041
      @geraldfreibrun3041 Місяць тому

      I don't know how I feel about Omelas as a take away type of story I get the feeling that sometimes the people who "walk-away" either fall off a cliff, step on a landmine, or even just create another omela

    • @BrianS1981
      @BrianS1981 Місяць тому +2

      @@Hugebull You're misunderstanding the history of war. There was a short period of c. 150 years where in Europe and the white colonies (and there alone) a version of limited war was practised*. This was as a reaction to the complete destruction of large parts of the HRE by the Thirty Years War. The wars of revolution destroyed all that, and despite the lies Victorian society told itself, they never came back.
      *Of course wars against non whites never became "civilised". Who cares what a bunch of savages think, especially when you have the guns and they do not.

    • @Hugebull
      @Hugebull Місяць тому +8

      @@BrianS1981 Your statement is objectively wrong. The War of the Spanish Succession was absolutely brutal. And this was only around 50 years after the 30 Years War. It was the first time in Europe we saw armies of 100 thousand men since Julius Caesar conquered Gaul. Large parts of Bavaria was burned. The struggle between Hungary and Austria was terrible. And the scale of warfare in the Low Countries was extreme. And of course there was the Great Turkish War 20 years before this.
      If you had gone to pre-colonial Africa or India, you would have held the same views as the Europeans of the day had.

    • @flashgordon6670
      @flashgordon6670 Місяць тому +1

      Hitler and Eva Braun escaped to Argentina. You can watch the docudrama film Greywolf and Mark Felton videos; Find the Fuhrer, if you don’t believe me.
      And Operation Market Garden was all a gigantic feint. To keep the German panzers locked into the Netherlands and stop them reinforcing the Siegfried line.
      If Market Garden was a success, the entire British army would’ve been destroyed, on the North German plain.
      Watch the video; History undone: If Market Garden succeeds the Germans win the battle of the Bulge. On the Times Radio History channel, if you don’t believe me.

  • @RogerBuffington
    @RogerBuffington Місяць тому +8

    One of the best "if the Germans won the war" novels out there. Engrossing and well-written, and probably about as realistic an alternate history scenario as can be had. The novel is really good and the HBO film is quite good as well, with superb music by Gary Chang.

  • @danielrudolf5441
    @danielrudolf5441 8 днів тому +6

    Fatherland is one of the best alternate history novels ever written. It's a meticulously researched book with a very plausible vision of how a post-WWII Nazi Germany might've been like. Unlike such drug-fueled sheer lunacies like The Man in the High Castle.

  • @Z3sty_St4r
    @Z3sty_St4r Місяць тому +62

    Peace vs Justice is a very pertinent theme - in many domains. Would we risk WW3 and billions, to give justice for the Holocaust is a thought provoking idea, but even in current days, many conflicts (from Ukraine to Gaza) can be framed in similar ways. You can have one or the other, but not both.

    • @cameronwixcey9692
      @cameronwixcey9692 Місяць тому +11

      Most pertinently, social justice for past crimes.
      Do we have reparations (both direct and affirmative action) and "justice" or "injustice" and peace?
      Both Justice and Injustice are in inverted commas because arguments can be made for either situation being just and unjust.

    • @Svevsky
      @Svevsky Місяць тому

      How is this even a question? Starting WW3 is evil for any reason. Especially for the sake of revenge. It would be like china starting WW3 to avenge the native americans.

    • @fabianherrmann6398
      @fabianherrmann6398 Місяць тому +7

      In the book Starship Troopers there is a scene in OCS questioning if it is moral to resume a war over unreleased POWs or even just one POW held captive, even though dead and suffering would restart, and the guy might not be worthy or even die in the meantime. It would be more than justified is the consent in the class, but the written proof in symbolic logic that is given as assignment is sadly never mentioned again.

    • @flashgordon6670
      @flashgordon6670 Місяць тому +1

      Hitler and Eva Braun escaped to Argentina. You can watch the docudrama film Greywolf and Mark Felton videos; Find the Fuhrer, if you don’t believe me.
      And Operation Market Garden was all a gigantic feint. To keep the German panzers locked into the Netherlands and stop them reinforcing the Siegfried line.
      If Market Garden was a success, the entire British army would’ve been destroyed, on the North German plain.
      Watch the video; History undone: If Market Garden succeeds the Germans win the battle of the Bulge. On the Times Radio History channel, if you don’t believe me.

    • @donjuanmckenzie4897
      @donjuanmckenzie4897 Місяць тому

      Justice implies there was sime wrong doing

  • @scottyp1303
    @scottyp1303 28 днів тому +4

    Thank you for saving me 2 hrs of watching the movie. I've always believed books are better than movies because you're the director/casting agent/photographer plus who knows how to scare or shock you better than yourself.

    • @_Dovar_
      @_Dovar_ 2 дні тому

      And the obvious Hollywood "influences", so to speak.

  • @waterbears9874
    @waterbears9874 Місяць тому +6

    This channel may genuinely be one of my new favorites

    • @EdDantes-v8c
      @EdDantes-v8c Місяць тому

      Me too! Glad I discovered it.

  • @andrewpytko4773
    @andrewpytko4773 Місяць тому +4

    Thank you for covering this. It is the book that got me to become a fan of alternate history.

  • @ANGLORUSSIANCZ
    @ANGLORUSSIANCZ Місяць тому +14

    Not being one for fiction I picked up the hardback copy of Fatherland on its release purely because the cover caught my eye. The Brandenburg Gate flying a swastika and European Union flags. Then I opened to see a map of the Reich in 1964. I read,Ember reading Chapter One in the store.

    • @epiculo2
      @epiculo2 Місяць тому

      @@ANGLORUSSIANCZ Not by chance, in the novel there is a European Union with the Ode to Joy as an anthem.

  • @3L_B4R7O
    @3L_B4R7O Місяць тому +16

    12:57 *The following words fit very well with what is happening right now...*

  • @chaosgyro
    @chaosgyro Місяць тому +46

    It's a good thought, because what virtue is there, really, in throwing living bodies onto the fire to honor dead ones?
    It reminds me of Gandalf in Lord of the rings, though reversed somewhat in its implications, "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."

    • @flashgordon6670
      @flashgordon6670 Місяць тому +1

      Bc the bodies were irradiated from tactical nuke tests. See Tino Struckman Last Nazi Secrets Nuclear weapons.

    • @jenniferbrewer5370
      @jenniferbrewer5370 7 днів тому

      Gandalf sounds like a Jedi.

    • @chaosgyro
      @chaosgyro 7 днів тому

      @jenniferbrewer5370 That feels like an insult to Gandalf 😄

  • @rufust.firefly6352
    @rufust.firefly6352 Місяць тому +10

    One of my favorite books. I love Harris, his Cicero books were great too. I think you nailed it in this video (you seem to in all your videos).

  • @williamlydon2554
    @williamlydon2554 Місяць тому +10

    I think some of the best Alt-History stories are framed around the setting as opposed to solely about it. A world where Japan was victorious in the Pacific for example, feels more real when it's seen through the eyes of a Kyoto business man in a trip abroad vs a play by play of events

  • @paulsillanpaa8268
    @paulsillanpaa8268 Місяць тому +15

    Kind of reminds me of "V for Vendetta" (the graphic novel, not the movie), where one of the key characters is a police officer investigating the bombings carried out by 'V.' He serves the fascist government, and (at first) sees V as a dangerous terrorist & madman, but he's not a committed ideologue like a lot of the other government characters. More than that, he's old enough to remember what Britain was like before the war...

    • @flyboy152
      @flyboy152 20 днів тому +1

      The same character exists in the movie.

  • @padawanmage71
    @padawanmage71 29 днів тому +5

    As a lover of alternate history, i remember reading the book and being unable to put it down. All the mistakes Hitler made in our timeline, he didn't in this one (he didn't initially invade the USSR, had the atom bomb made early and exploded on a V3 rocket just outside the states after Hiroshima was bombed as a warning to the US). Then the movie came out and it seemed ok...until that ending. IIRC, Joe P Kennedy was big antisemite and would not have been as affected as seen in the movie. Makes me almost wish a remake more faithful the book were made...

  • @mojrimibnharb4584
    @mojrimibnharb4584 Місяць тому +30

    The US "threat" advisory system is really brilliant, much better than the one in the novel. Having 5 levels rather than 4 it can be raised and lowered for effect without ever reading as low or severe.

  • @alanpennie8013
    @alanpennie8013 5 днів тому +3

    *March is divorced and living alone with limited visitation rights*.
    Of course he is.
    He's a detective.

  • @IronPiedmont
    @IronPiedmont Місяць тому +5

    Fatherland is one of my favorite books of all time, and its great to see it gain attention. In fact, it actually inspired my own writings.

  • @Henchgirl7342
    @Henchgirl7342 Місяць тому +24

    This just might be my perspective as someone who was born after 2000.
    If Germany "won" ww2, would anyone *actually* care about the hall-of-cost ? I don't think so. Reason being- look at the Native American genocide, no one *actually* cares about it not even Native Americans who extist today. At best it's a fringe historical fixation or a political talking point when its convenient, but no one really cares that it happened.
    In the logic of this AltHis story, at best, it would be a rallying point for Slavic rebels, if anything.

    • @Hugebull
      @Hugebull Місяць тому +6

      You are entirely correct that nobody would care. Now about the Slavic peoples, it entirely depends. Many of the Southern Slavs were quite enthusiastic about working with the Germans.
      And we could easily see a situation where many would view themselves as sort of "Secondary Aryans". Similarly to how it was with the German and Scandinavian Lutherans who migrated to the Calvinistic United States in the early 1800s. They were not seen as full "WASP", but they were pretty close. And seen as brothers in comparison to the alien Catholics.
      With the Germans picking sides in the region, the various groups would hold differing views. The place isn't suited for any sort of German Lebensraum. And it would take a really long time filling Belarus and Ukraine. So the Slavic attitude would depend more on who sided with the Germans and who well on the wrong side.
      With the ones on the wrong side being... disappeared. While the victors becoming "Secondary Aryans".

  • @or_gluzman561Peace_IL_PS
    @or_gluzman561Peace_IL_PS Місяць тому +34

    two things Feral Historian
    1. this is very similar to how america overlook many japanese atrocities after ww2 for their corporation after the war against the USSR
    2. did you ever heard of the HOI4 mod The New Order: Last Days of Europe and if you did what do you think on it's take on a three-way Cold War in the 60s between Nazi Germany and Einheitspakt to Empire of Japan and Co-Prosperity Sphere and finely the United States of America and Organization of Free Nations
    and how in this Scenario germany won the war but lost the peace and ended up with ruin economy and angry and unhappy german populous and also collapse into a civil war after hitler die

    • @victorkreig6089
      @victorkreig6089 Місяць тому

      "Many Japanese atrocities"
      There really aren't that many, and a lot of them are blown out of proportion to hide away the fact that just as many Asian countries did the exact same thing and more often than not worse.
      The reason we so called "hand wave" is because the pacific war was literally our fault and we ended up murdering an insane amount of japanese as a result(along with lots of people in Asia dying who wouldn't have otherwise)

    • @Hugebull
      @Hugebull Місяць тому +6

      @@victorkreig6089 By "our fault", I assume you mean the United States. And if by Britain and America sinking their navies after World War One, then I would agree with you. But the Japanese invaded China entirely on their own.
      And if China was the only country making a big deal out of the events of war, then I would agree with you.
      But we do have South Korea. Who to this day still bring up what was done to them. And Japan is the only one to refuse to acknowledge it.
      The medical horrors of the Japanese during the war is on par with Mengele and his crew.
      Had Japan not have invaded China, they would not have been embargoed.

    • @MrLemonbaby
      @MrLemonbaby Місяць тому +1

      I wonder what it would look like from a slightly higher altitude.
      Allow me to posit that the wars of the 20th Century were really one war i.e. The Long War: 1914-1991. The goal therein, on-off, wise and foolish, was to decide whether, going forward, the predominating form of government in the world would be parliamentary or authoritarian. This premise guided Allied decisions.
      The Soviets were the main instrument for the destruction of the German army; the Allies were forced to make accommodations.
      More, the US was facing an invasion of Japanese home islands, expectation being that it would double our casualties to date but we wanted as many of those number to be named Ivan as possible. Invasion was a forced issue.
      Remember that we never fought more than 50% of the Japanese army. There were a dozen commands occupying as many countries and millions of people, commands that had never known a single defeat. The end of hostilities without surrender of the Home Islands would have left the US with an unsolvable conundrum.
      Back to the discussion, as far as extracting some form of revenge for historic outrages I must say no or we will fall into something like the Balkans where nothing is ever forgotten and nothing is ever learned. But doesn't that sound like exactly what is happening now in Western Civ, competing tribes of grievance collectors?

    • @Hugebull
      @Hugebull Місяць тому +2

      @@MrLemonbaby The American victory of Japan was inevitable, and invasion of the mainland has been quite overblown. Japan is a small island with little resources. The Japanese fleet was gone. And the firebombings that the Americans were doing were more destructive than the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
      Victory over Japan would have perhaps taken another year. But the suffering would have been on the Japanese side, as they would face a famine on a biblical scale.
      And so too would all their forces stationed outside of Japan.
      Yes, the way may have lasted to 1946. But every habitable area in Japan would be destroyed. There would be no food production and no industrial production. While around 70 million people would be facing catastrophic levels of famine.
      They went to war because of pride and pride alone. And while there are possible scenarios for a German victory on the continent, the fate of the Japanese was sealed the moment they went they war. Even if they captured India, Australia, and New Zealand. The American Navy would isolate islands, and eventually blockade the Japanese mainland completely, while bombers would reduce their sacred island to rubble.

  • @TH3F4LC0Nx
    @TH3F4LC0Nx Місяць тому +5

    Oh yeah, I remember liking Fatherland quite a bit. Really good alternate history novel. I liked how true it played its story to the world it had constructed, even though I don't remember if we're ever told exactly how Germany won the war. And the ending was sort of reminiscent of For Whom the Bell Tolls.

  • @avus-kw2f213
    @avus-kw2f213 Місяць тому +14

    13:45 depends if I like the victim group or the perpetrator to be perfectly honest

    • @feralhistorian
      @feralhistorian  Місяць тому +12

      I think deep down that's everyone's answer, if they're being honest with themselves.

  • @KarlSnow-z9j
    @KarlSnow-z9j Місяць тому +35

    I remember watching this when it aired. Reminded me of the film adaptation of 'Gorky Park', with it's look behind the brutalist facade of an authoritarian state to see the very regular people that populate it. I thought of both films when the short-lived show 'Counterpart', set in contemporary Berlin, aired a few years back. Always wondered if that show was canned in 2019 due to it's prescience...featured a 'big flu' of unnamed origin.

    • @igorslocks
      @igorslocks Місяць тому +2

      🤔🤔🤔

    • @happinesstan
      @happinesstan 12 днів тому

      I haven't seen either film, but I always thought the books were very similar.

  • @jamesdouglas6977
    @jamesdouglas6977 Місяць тому +48

    Will be getting this book just to see how Nazi Germany survived WWII.

    • @phoenixzappa7366
      @phoenixzappa7366 Місяць тому +2

      Don't bother

    • @jamesdouglas6977
      @jamesdouglas6977 Місяць тому +7

      @@phoenixzappa7366 why? Explain.

    • @ProfessorPesca
      @ProfessorPesca Місяць тому +30

      IIRC correctly you don’t really find that out. You’re just dropped in the middle of the 1960s and this guy’s investigation.

    • @fabianherrmann6398
      @fabianherrmann6398 Місяць тому +48

      Spoiler:
      The book states that Operation Blau succeded in taking the Oilfields and cut off the Volga River, thus the Red Army ran out of fuel. Also the UK got starved out through Uboot warfare. Then the US dropped the bomb on Japan ending the pacific war but a V3-Rocket exploded over New York, showing the US that they could be hit if they came for Europe. The stalemate turned into a status quo.

    • @victorkreig6089
      @victorkreig6089 Місяць тому +14

      ​@@fabianherrmann6398was the author aware that the Germans had their own little atom splitting project going as well?
      I also find it ironic that the Nagisaki bomb wiped out the japanese' own nuclear research that was arguably relatively close to a solution at the time of being turned to dust

  • @fabianherrmann6398
    @fabianherrmann6398 Місяць тому +19

    I did like the book. The scanario is likely enough to suspend disbelief and the message as a warning is solid. Nobody cares unless they have too!

    • @TheresaReichley
      @TheresaReichley Місяць тому +11

      I think what I took from the book (never even heard about the movie) is just how ordinary life under a Nazi state would be - unless you were a target or made yourself one. That’s how all the bad stuff happens, because life didn’t stop. The kids have school and homework and sports and you have a job and a family to care for, there are sports to follow, etc. it’s too easy for people to ignore the ugliest parts of the Nazis because they’re “busy” and life looks ordinary.
      And the other part is that we’ve constructed a cartoon version of fascism that actually enables it. We are taught by television shows and movies that fascism is constant parades and angry speeches and flags with symbols on them. We think it’s going to be open and obvious and the world stops. And so as long as our fascist government doesn’t look like our cartoons, it’s going to slip by and most people won’t notice or care.

    • @victorkreig6089
      @victorkreig6089 Місяць тому +4

      Its a very weak portrayal but in the context of the author growing up under the great lie he did a pretty good job with the context he was forced to work with, and no internet at his disposal to boot ​@@TheresaReichley

    • @dagon99
      @dagon99 Місяць тому +1

      ​@victorkreig6089 he did fairly well

    • @TheresaReichley
      @TheresaReichley Місяць тому

      @@victorkreig6089 that’s the thing, he didn’t lie. We lied to ourselves about what these kinds of governments are like. If you watch any WW2 themed movies, Nazis were just nothing but parades and rallies and angry speeches and flags everywhere. In this version, life was barely noticeably worse. Life went on. Cops were busy with normal crimes. If you wanted to get involved you had to dig to find out about the ugly stuff they were doing.

  • @flyboy152
    @flyboy152 20 днів тому +4

    Building on your comment of the State taking over the family, one time March goes to drop his son at his ex-wife’s house. His son, his ex, and the ex’s boyfriend are all there, and all in a uniform of one sort or another. March’s bitter realization about how messed up his country is comes when he points out the dog is the only creature in the house not wearing a uniform.

  • @colonial6452
    @colonial6452 Місяць тому +2

    I really enjoyed this novel, since much of it was set in my Berlin Dahlem neighborhood. I was assigned to the US Embassy Office there in the early 1990s. A fantastic mystery/fantasy with alternative history.

  • @thomaslamb8635
    @thomaslamb8635 Місяць тому +29

    This question you posed, “how far would you be willing to go, in pursuit of justice for people long dead”, reminds me of something I learned years ago.
    Specifically, the visceral gut punch I received when I learned of the bombing of Dresden. That American and British bombers took part in it. This wasn’t something that was ever covered in school. Nothing even came close.
    I felt ashamed. Betrayed, almost. This, and several other events during WWII, sent me down a rabbit hole. I thought we were the “good guys”. How could we take part in something so horrible?
    I’ve learned so much more outside of school, about historical events and such, than I ever did inside. Doing my own research or by watching videos on UA-cam and other sources. From creators like yourself.
    Your channel, and a few others, are like finding a breath of fresh air in a world clogged with dust and smoke. A few of them were booted into obscurity over the years. I may not have agreed with their assessments, but boy did they make me rethink things.
    The truth is a bitter pill to swallow.

    • @igorslocks
      @igorslocks Місяць тому +5

      Yes what you said is very true. In HS I had an English teacher (1 of the maybe 3/4 teachers/prof that taught me how to actually learn in all of HS& College. Likely no accident 75% of them were Literature teachers)who was also head of the English department of the entire school & thus determined curriculum. Every student from honors to remedial read Slaughterhouse Five. The decision to include that book has produced an untold number of illuminating points in the darkness. I read that book my Sophomore year in HS all the way back in 1990(fuck I'm old now,damnit!) and I literally wept. And then I saw The Greatest Story Never Told. I have relatives who were in WW2 & had heard stories about how most of the Allied soldiers thought the Russians were the real enemy so I was prepared for some things. But not seeing Women literally crucified. Watching that movie you think there is no fucking way there can be any more wars or conflicts. This was so bad you couldn't not learn. But...
      And as we correspond we truly sit at the closest point to a WW3 there has ever been. I don't know what can be said after that.
      Be safe and God Bless 🐕

    • @mysticfire7675
      @mysticfire7675 Місяць тому +2

      Dresden really wasn't anything special the Allies had been attacking civilian targets for most the war and burnt down multiple other cities the firebombing of Tokyo being a great example.
      The only reason Dresden has any relevance is because it was used as a anti-west propaganda tool by the Nazis then later pick up and used by the Soviets.

  • @GrainOnTheGo
    @GrainOnTheGo Місяць тому +5

    Fatherland was the first alt-hist I read as a kid and the ending always struck me as somber and sad. I wish we had more stories like this where it’s different in theory, but just as unfair as our world.

    • @SweetandFullofGrace
      @SweetandFullofGrace Місяць тому +1

      The fact is that marketing "minds" have decided that most people dont want that. They need to have a happy ending, which is weird since well regarded books other entertainment
      dont always have that, they leave people with more questions which is good. I mean one of the top comics is Walking Dead, which is pretty damn brutal and shows the changes
      of people, beginning the show was great... later seasons not so much, kind of like GOT. But yeah the publishers and producers dont want to take the risks.

  • @mikesarno7973
    @mikesarno7973 Місяць тому +1

    Great analysis and summary. This video was just recommended to me today. Instant subscribe.

  • @Khornebrzrkr1
    @Khornebrzrkr1 27 днів тому +2

    I listened to instead of watching this video, and I was very satisfied to find out that I was right Rutger Hauer would work very well as the protagonist before looking it up.

  • @jenniferbrewer5370
    @jenniferbrewer5370 7 днів тому +1

    I have this novel. Definitely a good read! And I agree, the movie's happy ending misses the whole point.

  • @anncontois7762
    @anncontois7762 Місяць тому

    Max? In any case, we've just discovered your channel and are thoroughly enjoying it. Thank you

    • @feralhistorian
      @feralhistorian  Місяць тому +1

      I was thinking about Max just a couple days ago. I'm fairly sure it's going to come up down the line, in relation to a few other works.

  • @TCHorwood-xq7mw
    @TCHorwood-xq7mw 20 днів тому +1

    I want to read it again now. Thanks for reminding me about it.

  • @ww21943
    @ww21943 Місяць тому

    I stumbled across this movie on TV in the late 90s or early 2000’s. So middle/high school for me. I was obsessed with WW2 and watching documentaries. I was flipping through channels and I caught the beginning of the movie which plays out like a documentary. So I left it on thinking I was watching a legit documentary. All of a sudden the Allies failed on D-Day!
    It was a good movie and the way I stumbled on it made it even better.

  • @giladpellaeon1691
    @giladpellaeon1691 Місяць тому +4

    I remember seeing this advertised on the cover the TV schedule booklet that used to come with the Sunday paper when I was a kid. Never saw it though. Makes me think a bit of Turtledove's later novel "In the Presence of Mine Enemies" which started as a short story about a secret Jewish family living in a triumphant globe bestriding Germany which grew into the novel involving the collapse of the regime in the style of the 1991 Soviet collapse.

  • @jean-pierrefernandez2460
    @jean-pierrefernandez2460 7 днів тому +1

    You’re wrong about one thing, some people definitely care. They care so much, They’re still making movies about it 80 years later! I’ve never seen something so heavily reinforced except this.

  • @BadWebDiver
    @BadWebDiver 4 дні тому

    I remember reading this novel and loving it! Saw the movie, and though there were a few changes, it was still quite enjoyable.

  • @FulmenTheFinn
    @FulmenTheFinn Місяць тому

    A very good analysis. The ending of the movie adaptation always bothered me for the same reasons you described in the video: realistically evidence of the Holocaust coming out in the world of Fatherland would've made headlines for a few days or weeks, and then it would've fizzled out, and that's it. I haven't read the book, but you've given me inspiration to do so. You've earned a subscriber.

  • @mustangmanmustangman4596
    @mustangmanmustangman4596 Місяць тому

    Awesome job my friend! Have seen this material in a long time but, enjoyed it then and now!

  • @Rick79LUFC
    @Rick79LUFC 24 дні тому

    Thats one beautiful back drop you chose 😊....you have a wonderful narrated voice iv subscribed look forward to watching more 😊

  • @LucasBenderChannel
    @LucasBenderChannel 24 дні тому +1

    Fantastic video! Thank you for making it. 👏

  • @miskatonicrus
    @miskatonicrus Місяць тому +1

    Thanks for the reminder of an excellent novel and for your perspective. Found your channel recently and enjoy the over thinking in the woods :)

  • @knowshistory8740
    @knowshistory8740 24 дні тому

    I like how you pointed out the differences in the Ending between the book and the novel. Typically for Robert Harris, he leaves the fate of some characters in the end open. And we can't even be sure if Charlie makes it out of Germany. In the final scene, März imagines how she leaves the hotel, drives to the border post, how the soldiers listen the radio broadcast and how the wave her through. But don't know for sure. Since it all happens in März' imagination.

  • @jester9217
    @jester9217 Місяць тому +5

    Ultimately it would come to political convenience, if the government can ignore p.o.w's being held and worked in Vietnam because the alternative would make the wrong people look bad a president who sold himself on being a peacemaker might just hand off the folder to the c.i.a and shake hands make peace and know they have another chip in the game of politics.

  • @JACKnJESUS
    @JACKnJESUS 24 дні тому

    Whenever I have a bad day, I know I can come to this channel for some good old fashioned cheer.

  • @Julius_Hardware
    @Julius_Hardware Місяць тому +18

    Excellent analysis as usual. The book is far better than the HBO, with the right ending. Its also a plain good read, its biggest fault being the all the inferior AH works it inspired.
    BTW is that a Stargate patch?

    • @feralhistorian
      @feralhistorian  Місяць тому +9

      Indeed.

    • @geraldfreibrun3041
      @geraldfreibrun3041 Місяць тому +1

      @@feralhistorian Do you think you could cover The New Order: Last Days of Europe? Its a cold-war strategy game based on the same premise.

  • @stevenc.6502
    @stevenc.6502 4 дні тому +2

    Correction: the Soviet Holocaust was the greatest crime of the century but, like almost all communist atrocities, it's been memory-holed.

  • @stischer47
    @stischer47 Місяць тому +97

    Knowing the anti-Semitism prevalent in the US before and after the war, there would be those who think that the Nazis had the right idea. Most would just shrug their shoulders and move on.

    • @AndreLuis-gw5ox
      @AndreLuis-gw5ox Місяць тому +40

      Patton literally said "we fought the wrong enemy" during his brief post war life

    • @Remington53
      @Remington53 Місяць тому +43

      @@AndreLuis-gw5ox To be fair, such a sentiment refers mostly to how the end of the war enabled Communist control of eastern Europe-the Iron Curtain and all that.

    • @thealaskanseparatist6786
      @thealaskanseparatist6786 Місяць тому +24

      ​@Remington53 Most of the Communist pre Stalin Purge were of Jewish variety I honestly forget the percentage of bolshevik party members who were of Jewish percent but I would guess around 70%

    • @wesleystreet
      @wesleystreet Місяць тому +16

      @@Remington53 It wasn't just the US though. The ruling British elites of Churchill's era weren't fond of Jews and many were openly hostile and antisemitic.

    • @wesleystreet
      @wesleystreet Місяць тому +17

      @@thealaskanseparatist6786 Many Jews that the Red Army liberated from the camps in Eastern Europe - such as the parents of Norman Finkelstein - would not tolerate criticism of Stalin, despite the purges of Trotskyite Jews from the Communist Party during the '30s and in the government of the '50s. They never disputed that the purges happened but they placed having the Soviets literally save their lives as being more important than anything else Stalin had done.

  • @daniellabra4186
    @daniellabra4186 Місяць тому +1

    This was a brillant analysis... Thanks for posting.

  • @chriscooper654
    @chriscooper654 11 днів тому +1

    I also prefer the book's ending: March realizes he's won a personal victory, not somehow undone all the horrors he's just learned about.

  • @JasonKanigan
    @JasonKanigan Місяць тому +4

    Nice, I just re-watched this last week. Had the book when it came out.
    Like you, on this viewing I noticed that the uniforms really should have changed in three decades. But I let it pass as well.

  • @Martyn2021
    @Martyn2021 Місяць тому +5

    If you like alternate history I take a look at Len Deighton SS-GB it works along the same idea.

  • @careypridgeon
    @careypridgeon Місяць тому +9

    These ‘Hitler won the war’ alternate history stories tend not to interest me. I experienced how people view the same history in different ways when I was a child. It is likely the public wouldn’t have known about those camps if it weren’t for the embedded reporters, those were standard by then, but hadn’t been a proper thing until WW1, and a lot of their footage was staged. The Crimean war had some reporters, but not in the embedded sense.
    In Australia we knew a number of men who’d fought in WW2 and to them Churchill was a war criminal, I used to sit with them, and to hear them talk you’d think he’d executed australians personally. Then I came to the UK where the same man is a national hero, for pretty much the same reasons (being a ruthless S.O.B when the UK needed one)
    But, a Rutger Hauer movie I wasn’t aware existed, that I find interesting, the blu-ray has already been ordered. I’ll get the original Robert Harris book to compare them when I have some spare audible credits.

    • @victorkreig6089
      @victorkreig6089 Місяць тому

      Churchill is the monster we were lied to about Hitler being
      The war ends and magically Dresden didn't happen
      The war ends and what he did to the Boers was never a thing
      The aussies knew what he did and that's why they hated him
      He was the definition of scum and the fact that in this modern era he's looked up to as someone to aspire to be is insane
      But that's what happens when information is curated

    • @feralhistorian
      @feralhistorian  Місяць тому +7

      What I found most interesting about the HBO adaptation was its portrayal of Berlin. It has all the oversized monuments, but it's still a real city with boring apartment blocks and public transit.

    • @careypridgeon
      @careypridgeon Місяць тому +4

      @@feralhistorian The uniform thing you picked up on does indeed make little to no sense, there's no way they'd still be wearing uniforms from the early 40's still . I watch a lot of old movies, and in those you can see police uniforms changing in just twenty years. The UK Carry On comedy movie series are as much documentaries on how things were changing here as they were comedies, though this wasn't the intent.

  • @gavinhammond1778
    @gavinhammond1778 Місяць тому +1

    You film in such pretty locations. Thanks for the content.

    • @Michaelfatman-xo7gv
      @Michaelfatman-xo7gv Місяць тому +1

      Thinks me of Red Dawn.

    • @gavinhammond1778
      @gavinhammond1778 Місяць тому

      @@Michaelfatman-xo7gv haha, now that you say it, I realise that's spot on😎

  • @1977Yakko
    @1977Yakko 14 днів тому +1

    As I understand it, the Gestapo wasn't that large of an entity, at least in comparison to other State bureaucracies. It relied on neighbor turning on neighbor.

    • @comentedonakeyboard
      @comentedonakeyboard 12 днів тому

      I think it was never more then 30000men, to controle the entirety of nazi ocupied europe. Compare that to aprox. 200000 Stasi agents for 16million east Germans.

  • @KatanamasterV
    @KatanamasterV 13 днів тому +1

    The algorithm can neither confirm nor deny

  • @rogersheddy6414
    @rogersheddy6414 20 днів тому +2

    Everyone has a uniform.
    Please tell me the mailmen have daggers, pistols, rifles, and bayonets, as they did in Hitler's time...
    Imagine the old Dog vs. Mailman trope then...

  • @RodmanTackleAdvisor
    @RodmanTackleAdvisor Місяць тому

    This was the first "adult fiction" I ever read. I was 12. The movie came out around then too. That book pretty much addicted me to the techno/Military thriller genre.

  • @dmar.gar5689
    @dmar.gar5689 Місяць тому +4

    Nice video

  • @TheFallnangl76
    @TheFallnangl76 11 днів тому +1

    We don't have to imagine, we already know how governments react to news of atrocities...the holodomor, anyone?

  • @c.jacobellis3289
    @c.jacobellis3289 Місяць тому

    This is an excellent movie, I saw it when it first came out, and have watched many, many times since.

  • @aaronanderson2092
    @aaronanderson2092 Місяць тому +2

    As usual, you've done a great video. Have you read Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle? I wonder what you think about it. Could be fodder for another series of videos like the Draka books.

    • @feralhistorian
      @feralhistorian  Місяць тому +2

      I started reading Quicksilver way back and then lost the book somewhere. Worth revisiting from what I recall.

  • @kirishima638
    @kirishima638 20 днів тому +1

    The greatest conceit of this book is that the SS - THE SS! - is relegated to a mere police force after the war, with uniformed SS officers plodding train stations and streets for petty criminals.
    In reality the SS was at the top of the hierarchy, certainly above the Gestapo. And Germany had its own dedicated police force.

  • @arturowagner4728
    @arturowagner4728 13 днів тому +1

    Loved this movie! Book was good.

  • @EdDantes-v8c
    @EdDantes-v8c Місяць тому

    You deserve WAY more subs!

  • @TBone-bz9mp
    @TBone-bz9mp Місяць тому +1

    I would very much describe Fatherland as a portrayal of the evils of the banal. It’s not about how something as evil the Holocaust can by committed by someone so ordinary, but how the ordinary often can be so evil.

  • @jorgeluis4389
    @jorgeluis4389 Місяць тому +2

    Dang. Now I have to read the novel.

  • @Bugga451
    @Bugga451 Місяць тому +2

    These videos come out right before my first break, which also happens to be a WFH day. It's perfect.
    Are there any plans on covering Command and Conquer? Namely, how the Nod media manipulation campaign subplot is a bit... prescient these days.

  • @davidferrara1105
    @davidferrara1105 Місяць тому

    I read that back in the day! One of his best

  • @spartanalex9006
    @spartanalex9006 Місяць тому +1

    What's funny is that I was thinking "Getting about time for a Feral drop." and then look what materialized in my feed.
    Anyway, while I admit it is a bit of an overdone topic, German Victory is just one of those scenarios that we all kind of think about and I'm even drafting a timeline for (your bit on the Middle East being interesting as that's something I had to think a lot about for my version of it). I will admit to Fatherland being an inspiration for my timeline with it having a lot of similarities of mixing Hitler's dreams with the Cold War reality, like in it, Generalplan Ost is discovered and observed by U2s till one got splashed near Crimea in 57. Though I love your idea of the Germans Bureauocracizing all of German society. I may take some inspiration from that.

  • @TheStarshipGarage
    @TheStarshipGarage Місяць тому +9

    Even as a child, I always found it odd that in comparison the gulags and the great purge were swept under the rug in comparison to the holocaust, and I found it disgusting how people LARP online as communists, singing the praise of a nation that slaughtered millions of dissenters meanwhile if you roleplayed as a nazi you would be cancelled. Isn't evil all treated as evil no matter which side of the aisle its on? I always found it odd that I knew all about the volumes of holocaust literature from a young age but only recently did I hear about the Gulag Archipelago, and having read about both events, I find them equally as disturbing. I think if the history we taught focused on the gulags and purges as much as the holocaust, we would have a lot more sensible people and a lot less radicalization.
    I was at first confused when you said Nazism wasn't a "singular" evil. But now I understand what you meant. Nazism does not hold a monopoly on death and atrocities. It is but one in a long line of ideologies that seek to tear apart humanity. And having a tunnel vision thinking that it is the only great evil in this world will only make us ignore the others that seek the same goal.

    • @revelation20232
      @revelation20232 24 дні тому

      Consider for a moment if you will the political ramifications of putting anyone or any atrocity on par with Hitler & the big H. Those 2 are the foundations of the current world order and it's mythology. You may ask who or why it is this way but a simple look at US foreign policy especially lately should point you in the right direction. Perhaps the fact people are sitting in prison in multiple countries in Europe for questioning the establishment narrative should tell you this IS the foundation of the current paradigm.

  • @thegunslinger8806
    @thegunslinger8806 Місяць тому

    Oh shit! I remember this movie! Rudger Howard was in this as the detective! Really great movie too, its on youtube i think.

  • @baldviking1970
    @baldviking1970 19 днів тому +1

    Movie adaptions have their own value, but they seldom grasp the complexiety of the original books. Same for V for Vendetta. Most of the main point of the original comic - what we are willing to give up for security - are left out in the movie.

  • @JwWilliamson-y7v
    @JwWilliamson-y7v 27 днів тому

    That was an excellent review

  • @apstrike
    @apstrike Місяць тому +2

    Thanks for reminding us of this book.
    I wanted to disagree with you and the author and make the claim that somebody would remember the Holocaust. But the clip you have of Harris fairly refused that and I must admit that if we have the level of Holocaust denial that we have today with all the evidence that we have, then it is entirely possible that the incident would go down the memory hole if Nazi Germany had won.

    • @Hugebull
      @Hugebull Місяць тому

      The Romans in Gaul. The Mongols across Eurasia. The Counter-Reformation. The Spanish in Central America. The Han conquest of China. The Arab Slave Trade. The Triangular Trade.
      Selling White women as slaves in the American South in the 1850s. The terrorism of "freedom fighters".
      It is really just purely academic at this point.
      Nobody cares about the Catholic Church killing anyone who dared to read and translate the bible to their own language. Nobody cares about St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. Nobody cares about the complete eradication of entire civilizations at the hand of the Spanish. Nobody cares about the millennia of genocide at the hands of the Han to become the dominant race in China. Nobody cares about the mass enslavement and castration of Africans at the hands of the Arabs. Nobody wants to talk about the murders, kidnappings, and mass violence at the hands of people like Nelson Mandela. And nobody wants to talk about White slaves sold in the South, as it doesn't fit in either of the two narratives.
      Just as nobody cares about the fact that chocolate for the price and scale we have today, is only possible because of current day slavery.
      Just as nobody cares about the fact that the only reason we have reached the extreme Golden Age we live in today, is because of the mass enslavement of Southeast Asia. Without this, smart phones would not be possible.
      You can do a lot of crazy things when you enslave Billions upon Billions of people.
      And nobody cares.

  • @paulwee1924dus
    @paulwee1924dus Місяць тому

    Rutger Hauer played also an SS officier in "Pastorale 1943" in 1943, It's a 1978 Dutch WW2 movie.

  • @stphnmrrs3982
    @stphnmrrs3982 Місяць тому

    You've definitely convinced me to read it!

  • @brastionskywarrior6951
    @brastionskywarrior6951 Місяць тому +2

    The middle east in a germany-wins-in-europe scenario is interesting to think about. I do not doubt that whatever might be written on the subject would be controversial but also fascinating. Especially depending on how you decide the pacific war ends up (in all likelyhood japan is still defeated by the americans, even if victory isn't as absolute as in OTL)

    • @fabianherrmann6398
      @fabianherrmann6398 Місяць тому +1

      Considering the real world intervention of Germany in Syria and Iraq in WWII also Himmler interest in Islam as "warriors religion" and the willingess of Arab nationalist to work with the Germans against the old colonial powers - then in AH, if the Africa Corps and Operation Blau had been successful, the Turks/Arab/Persian groups and states would have come under German influence quite easily.

    • @victorkreig6089
      @victorkreig6089 Місяць тому

      Lolno
      If Deutschland wins Europe it's because that bastard FDR loses power or is thwarted in forcing the Japanese to start the pacific war in the first place
      The middle east would he in a MUCH better position if we had never been forced into war in the first place, not just because the jews never steal their land but because the anglos aren't the ones in charge of the region and therefore can't keep those laughably bad border lines they drew there after The Great War
      The Germans were actually very good at understanding Africa and it's internal geopolitics which is why their colonies were so good, there is no way in hell they wouldn't have done a better job reorganizing thr middle east(as long as the Italians weren't given any power to do so, they sucked at it)

    • @Hugebull
      @Hugebull Місяць тому

      @@fabianherrmann6398 Racial supremacy was a cornerstone in Nazi ideology. Most likely, the entire region would be carved up as German oil extraction Reichskommissariats.
      These desert lands would serve only one thing. Put oil in the pipeline and get it to Germany.
      The lives of the people would mean nothing. Remember the memes that came out of 9/11, about turning the entire region into a parking lot?
      What do you think the unrestrained victorious Nazis would do the moment somebody opposed them?
      You don't need natives to extract the oil. In fact, they are in the way. The oil would flow a lot safer and a lot smoother without anyone living there at all.

    • @JoshuaSolomon
      @JoshuaSolomon 20 днів тому

      The Farhud in 1941 would have been a preview of a Middle East in the Fatherland universe.

    • @JoshuaSolomon
      @JoshuaSolomon 20 днів тому

      @@fabianherrmann6398Some would say that they did in this timeline. After all, Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb adapted their ideologies from Nazism. Not to mention how Nazis who escaped justice actually did end up in Arab countries and assisted these governments in what they felt was a continuation of the Final Solution.

  • @keegobricks9734
    @keegobricks9734 Місяць тому +11

    To me I think history is no longer of any value to shape the present. They say those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it, yet if all our history is a bunch of lies used to prop up a mythology that benefits a regime, what difference does it make if we're versed in them or not? It's not that I don't think "truth" is a value, there's a reason why the first sin in the Bible was of a lie. However, if all truth is so heavily mixed in with lies as to be inextricable like mixing a glass of lemonade, where you can't ever separate the water from the lemon juice from the sugar from the little drop of poison added to it. The only reliable way not to die is not to drink it.
    There are a million atrocities in human history, I think it's a better question to ask why only the one going unnoticed would bother anyone, rather than asking if you yourself would be.

    • @victorkreig6089
      @victorkreig6089 Місяць тому

      The soap hoax is the foundation all of our modern society is built on
      Without it our world would be very VERY different
      Lies havw consequences and you're living in one

    • @igorslocks
      @igorslocks Місяць тому +2

      Interesting comment and more than a little relevant as we observe the world's current climate in October 2024.

    • @boobah5643
      @boobah5643 Місяць тому

      The point of history repeating is that people are people, and if you force them into the same positions as people in the past had, you can expect them to respond the same way. The point is to notice patterns, and through that, avoid doing the same damn thing that ruined nations in the past.

  • @williamvorkosigan5151
    @williamvorkosigan5151 Місяць тому

    Great video as always.

  • @RSmith-u5r
    @RSmith-u5r 13 днів тому +1

    Resurrection Day by Brendan DuBois is worth a review too. Cuban Missile Crisis gone wrong but somehow worse than wrong.

  • @Svartalf14
    @Svartalf14 Місяць тому

    I read it, didn't hate it, and found your analysis quite interesting (though I admit my memories are vague, as it was more than 10 years ago)

  • @osvaldofranco9036
    @osvaldofranco9036 Місяць тому +15

    I am part native American and African American decent in my genetic lineage, and I've said since I was a boy that if the Nazis had won, we would care about the holocaust as much as we do what was done to us, or the Armenians, or any other genocided people, little to nothing, and people would tell them to get over it!. I speak from experience!.

    • @feralhistorian
      @feralhistorian  Місяць тому +14

      I think you are absolutely right about that.

    • @TotalFreedomTTT-pk9st
      @TotalFreedomTTT-pk9st Місяць тому

      As an African American your populations have steadily grown decade after decade indicating no Biological duress - you might amend you sense of injustice - plus I would like evidence that White Europeans even owned slaves - all I've got my whole live is Hollywood movies written by confirmed slave owners

    • @flashgordon6670
      @flashgordon6670 Місяць тому +2

      So was Jimi Hendrix, he was a quarter Cherokee or Chayane. Can you play guitar like him?

    • @flashgordon6670
      @flashgordon6670 Місяць тому +1

      See Tino Struckman Last Nazi Secrets Nuclear weapons.

    • @osvaldofranco9036
      @osvaldofranco9036 Місяць тому +4

      @flashgordon6670 Well, that's a mentally ill person question.